Decisions Decisions
by Lucillia
Summary: Crowley was never one to waste an opportunity, especially when the end is nigh, and a golden one was dropped in his lap before he was returned to Hell. It always all comes down to Free Will, and the consequences thereof.
1. John's Choice

He popped the tape into the old VCR, starting and ending something that began almost two decades prior...

**March 1992, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco:**

The thing about staff at say a group home or an orphanage is that like parents, they can't be everywhere at once. Unlike parents however, they tend to have more children to watch, anywhere from six to twelve active kids, often with the behavioral problems that tend to come with being a part of the system running about, rather than one or two, or maybe three. Fortunately, there are usually more staff than parents hanging around during an outing. With three or four of them along, they tend to manage to keep an eye on the entire group with few incidents. That doesn't mean that they are infallible however, and sometimes a child or two manages to slip off during an outing.

On this particular day, a group from Edgewood, more specifically Diamond cottage, were on an outing to the playground at Golden Gate Park. There were three rather vigilant staff with them, but when it came to the girl with a fondness for swings, their watch was slightly relaxed, as she rarely caused trouble, and usually wasn't the sort to run off. Their watch on her was soon completely relaxed when a fight broke out between two of the boys while she sat quietly playing in the sand at the edge of the playground, and it was at that point that a predator took the opportunity to pick off a Likely-Not-To-Be-Missed-Too-Much bratling from the herd.

While this predator could be considered human, he was also the sort of being that John Winchester hunted. Unlike most of the human predators who frequent parks and snatch children, he had sold himself to something that required frequent sacrifices in order to obtain power. He often picked kids who looked to be wards of the state, as they were less likely to be missed, and nobody would make too much of a stink when they disappeared because there were no crying parents to stick in front of the news cameras, and they ran off all too often. The child who had been picked off from the group was to be the latest of these sacrifices.

The child whose disappearance had not yet been marked by the staff who had their hands full with breaking up the fight that had taken their attention, and who had been rendered incapable of calling for help was carried by her captor - who seemed to be one of the nice ordinary sort out for a day with his daughter who had grown tired and fallen asleep to passerby - to one of the unfortunately all too common isolated and hidden areas of the park where an altar had been set up for a purpose which normally wouldn't be discovered until it was far too late, by which point the child would be dead and the predator would have moved on to another large city. Unlike prior occurrences however, there was someone on the predator's tail, and that someone was John Winchester.

One of the reasons the predator who had stalked through the park had wanted power and had been willing to trade his soul and even his humanity to get it was that he was a coward. It had been because he was a coward that he had done what he had done, and gave a good man a nearly impossible choice. When John had reached the altar where the child was to be sacrificed, the man already had a weapon at hand, the clawed instrument with which the ritual was to be completed. Despite the fact that the ritual wasn't complete, the man swiped the weapon across the child's belly, ripping her open the instant he spotted John. It was then that he ran, leaving John with the choice between trying to help the obviously dying child who was bleeding out in front of him, or going after the monster who had pretty much just killed her in front of him, and preventing even more deaths.

"I've got him, go help the girl!" an armed man whose appearance practically screamed Hunter! who had raced into the bushes behind him yelled as he ran in the direction of the predator, ending John Winchester's moment of hesitation right as he had been about to spring into action and chase after the murdering bastard himself.

The girl who was rapidly bleeding out was still alive. In those days before cell phones had become anywhere near as common as they would be in the future, it would have taken too long to run for help and wait for an ambulance. Knowing that he had little time, John Winchester did his best to staunch the blood flow as he raced back to his car to drive the child to the nearest hospital.

Years later, when John had grown so used to having the girl around that he almost forgot that he didn't originally have three kids, he would never know how he'd managed to get away with what he'd done without getting arrested, and why nobody had associated the girl with the missing child who had finally ended up on the news a couple days after his adopted daughter had been admitted to the hospital when the staff who had brought her on the outing to the park couldn't find where she'd supposedly run off to, and searching police officers didn't turn up anything resembling the missing girl.

When he'd brought the girl to the hospital, he had told the suspicious doctors that she was his child. He'd hung around after dropping the girl into the arms of the doctors, because it would have been suspicious if he'd left after claiming that she was his, and he hadn't needed police on his tail for the attempted and possibly actual murder of a little girl. As he waited for the child to get out of surgery, he was stuck spinning a yarn to a pair of suspicious police officers, a yarn that would get him in deeper if they didn't buy it.

Fortunately for him, the girl he'd brought to the hospital had roughly the same hair and eye color as his own children, and Bobby Singer had pulled through for him when he'd faxed over some records that had been made from back-up copies of documents he'd left with Singer for safekeeping. According to the records that John was able to give to the hospital, Sam had a twin. Singer had apparently been watching re-runs of I Love Lucy when he'd made the convincing looking forgeries if the name he'd given the kid was anything to judge by.

Unfortunately for him, he hadn't been thinking when he'd raced into the hospital carrying a bleeding and dying child who'd nearly been eviscerated, and had inadvertently used his real name which was also on the documents that Bobby had sent over. With that little oversight, he couldn't simply slip away into the night, leaving the kid who would undoubtedly be identified at some point after his departure and be sent back to her group-home behind. If he did, he'd have the police on his ass for several real crimes to go with whatever they chose to dream up and charge him with. He could even end up losing Sam and Dean which was a far worse prospect to him than the possibility of serving prison time.

That was how John Winchester ended up on the road with three kids instead of two. As the Impala drove East as soon as Lucy was discharged from the hospital, a man stood on the sidewalk watching it go by, eating a candy bar as it passed.


	2. Lucy's Choice

**May 2000, London England, More Specifically Soho:**

Nothing about the dingy little bookstore seemed to fit the neighborhood it was located in, which was all the more puzzling since it had been there for decades despite the number of times that people had tried to relocate it, sometimes forcefully. The proprietor and his "friend" who often hung around looked to fit right in, which was why people didn't wonder why the hell the little shop which was tucked in an out of the way corner was even there in the first place. Ever since the adult bookstore which had been next door had gone out of business, business (which had been largely from from visitors who had mostly dropped by by mistake while trying to get to the purveyors of erotica in printed format) had mostly dried up. This was how the proprietor wanted it though. It meant that he didn't have to put out as much effort in keeping people from buying parts of his book collection. That was what the shop's inventory was. The shop was just an excuse for the proprietor to keep said collection without being questioned by his siblings. It was quite amazing the lengths the shop's owner would go through to prevent a sale, up to and including pretending to be sick and sneezing on his customers.

The proprietor of said rare/used book store, one Ezra Fell who most believed to be the nephew of the book store's previous owner who was believed to be the cousin of the owner before that, was a slightly pudgy blond haired, blue eyed man who had been described by people who had met him as, smart, British, and gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. He was also the man that Hunters across the United Kingdom went to for help, sort of like the British version of Bobby Singer, but with less alcohol, fewer junked cars outside, and a habit of calling people "dear" rather than "idjits". Incidentally, someone else manned the bank of phones that was discreetly hidden in his small office, someone with a quick and silver tongue who wasn't unaccustomed to lying. The man who owned the shop was incidentally not a man, but an angel of the Lord who had been hanging around on Earth for so long that he practically understood modern pop culture, which was quite a feat for an angel for whom such things were extremely transitory.

The proprietor's friend who constantly hung around the shop these days, a sleek and handsome dark haired man who was in fact a True Demon - which meant that he'd never been human, but was instead of the formerly angelic breed who'd taken the plunge with Lucifer - who had a tendency towards wearing black, and wearing dark shades even at night, who had been named Crawly, but preferred the name Crowley, had been on the phone with his Lesser Demon protegee when the bell on the shop door gave a particular chime which was his cue to become scarce. With a snap of his fingers, he turned invisible and hung up on his friend Fergus who had also taken the name Crowley, partially because he liked the way it sounded, and partially in tribute to him. While he liked the little guy, and thought he had style, the soon to be King of the Crossroads scared him at times. Fergus had _ambition._

As the proprietor of the shop sorted through some new arrivals in the back room, and the member of a demonic species that was rarely if ever seen outside of Hell as they tended to keep to their little capitol and leave the general day to day crap to the Lesser Demons invisibly watched, three people entered the shop. They were young, and tall, with the tallest of the three practically towering over the other two. For some strange reason, the Winchester boys were on the wrong side of the pond. He didn't recognize the girl that was with them, but he recognized an opportunity when he saw one, and the girl was one, a once-in-a-lifetime, you only get one shot at this, so make it count opportunity.

"Why are we here again Sam?" the oldest member of the group asked.

"Dad needs information, and the guy who owns this place is apparently the go to guy. Besides, I want to have a look around." the tallest member of the group replied.

What followed afterward wasn't very interesting considering the fact that Sam and Dean Winchester were part of the Apocalypse Plan B. Plan B had been running concurrent to Plan A just in case something happened to derail the Apocalypse, something such as say an angel and a demon teaming up and interfering, and say the Antichrist deciding that it was more fun to be human, reversing everything, and erasing just about everyone's memories of Plan A. Heaven and Hell both knew that there had been a Plan A, and that something had somehow gone wrong. Because of that, he and Aziraphale were being more closely watched by their respective sides. Paradoxically, this had allowed him to spend more time with the angel, as he'd come up with the excuse that he was trying to tempt his equal opposite into betraying Heaven as he was reasonably certain that Aziraphale had had something to do with the failing of the Apocalypse, and Aziraphale had given a similar line to his garrison. Being watched also meant that he couldn't do any blatant interfering in regards to the Winchesters however.

The Winchesters' visit to the shop during which Sam had managed to commit the ultimate sin of buying a book was mostly ignored by Crowley as soon as he realized that it didn't have world-ending implications. It was the girl that held most of Crowley's attention that day.

"Do we have a deal?" Crowley asked the girl several hours later after whispering in her ear for nearly ten minutes straight.

"Yes." the girl replied.

"Good." Crowley said with a smile before giving her a light peck on the lips as per protocol before going into another room in his apartment to fetch a tray of needles and inks that he'd prepared earlier for this little eventuality.


	3. Dean's Choice

**November 2009, Singer Salvage Yard Near Sioux Falls, South Dakota:**

Dean had found the tape with the sticky label attached when he'd gone to his father's storage unit after Carthage, looking for anything that might help out with the Apocalypse, namely with the part of the prevention thereof. Despite the fact that the label said **"Watch Me!" **in large urgent letters, the dusty cassette looked almost completely untouched. He had brought it to Bobby's more out of curiosity than anything since it didn't seem to be cursed and hadn't bothered the EMF meter.

At Bobby's, he had dug out an old VCR. He popped the tape into the old VCR, starting and ending something that began almost two decades prior...

"What's this?" Sam asked as he sat back on the couch.

"Us dicking around with a Camera apparently." Dean said as the film started.

"I don't remember this." Sam said as he watched the younger Dean on the television screen park a car whose steering wheel was on the wrong side.

"Get some Scotch!" the girl that had been in the car with Dean and his younger self who was wearing some sort of school uniform yelled.

"Scotch?" his younger self asked the girl who he'd apparently knew despite the fact that he'd never seen her before in his entire life.

"Hey, we're in Scotland." the girl who was wearing a similar uniform replied, shrugging.

The scene changed.

"Home sweet home while dad's off on yet another hunt. This time in England of all places." a younger Sam who was out of view was saying as he panned the camera around a bedsit in which three cots had been crammed.

"Aw, cheer up Sammy, we're in London. It's like a vacation or something." the younger Dean said as he came into the room behind him.

"For you maybe." the strange girl said as she came in after Dean. "But, we've got school."

"Come on Luce, how many people do you know that went to school in England?" Dean said.

"How about the entire school?" the girl who was apparently named Luce replied before flopping down on one of the cots and opening a textbook.

The scene changed again.

Sam, Dean, and the girl Luce and three strangers, one of whom was Dean's age, and the other two of whom were older, maybe in their thirties, were lounging in a very sleek and modern luxury apartment that was filled with a number of exceedingly healthy plants.

"I don't like it." the exceedingly handsome boy who was about Dean's age and Sam's height said. "Being messed about by a trickster, even if it is to teach someone a good lesson."

"Well, I can say one thing about _Loki_, and that's that he doesn't mess with people who don't deserve it." The dark haired man in sunglasses spoke up from where he was drawing on the girl Luce's stomach.

"What about the people who get caught in the middle of it?" the blond boy asked.

"He's gonna reverse time, and none of this will have happened to anyone except for that poor Winchester bastard." the dark haired man said as he continued to draw on the girl.

The scene suddenly froze and all except for the dark haired man sat stock-still.

"That's why I'm making this tape and giving you the chance to make the right choice when the time comes in order to save yourself a great deal of heartache." the dark haired man said with a diabolical smile as he moved the girl from his lap to the floor, revealing what he had drawn on her stomach.

It was a rather graphic and realistic looking drawing of the girl's insides.

"It seems that Johnny got a little too caught up in the hunt, all too eager to end the thing that killed his wife, and a certain someone had decided that it would be a good idea to teach him a lesson in why saving the victim is just as or even more important than killing the monster." the man said with a cold, cruel smile.

"Here's the decision you really made that day." the man who Sam and Dean got the feeling wasn't Gabriel in disguise said as he snapped his fingers.

The girl Luce lay on an altar that looked to be in a lightly wooded area that could have been just about anywhere. As the brothers and Bobby watched, the girl shrank until she was about seven or eight years old. A man with some sort of triple bladed claw-like weapon slashed her across the abdomen, along the lines on which the dark haired being had made his drawings, and ran off. After a moment of hesitation, Sam and Dean's father chased after the man who had sliced the girl open. The child who he had left behind took a distressingly long time to die, and she died alone.

"I'm giving you a year to make your choice John, what'll it be?" the man asked as he snapped his fingers, causing the scene to disappear.

The scene shifted back to the apartment where everyone was back to lounging as if nothing had happened. The blond who was about Dean's age was playing his game with Sam, Dean was sprawled out on the floor in front of a massive and surprisingly sleek looking television, channel surfing, the older blond man was in an armchair with a book, and the creature and Luce were back on the couch in the position they had been in before the disturbing interlude.

"Not a word Angel, not a word." the man who was most likely something else entirely said from his spot on the couch where Luce was once again across his lap, and he was adding to the drawing with a sharpie.

The slightly pudgy blond man who had an open book in his lap who looked to have been flying the rainbow flag since the day he was born gave the man a reproachful look, but otherwise remained silent.

It was at that point that the tape ended. Dean hit the eject button, and as he pulled the tape out of the VCR, it transformed in his hand. Dean suddenly found himself standing in front of some bushes in what looked like a park somewhere. He heard a yell, and a scream, and ran through the plants, grabbing his emergency back-up knife as he did so.

"I've got him, go help the girl!" Dean yelled as he ran after the freak who had been on the video.


	4. Lucy's choice 2

As soon as Dean had ended the child murdering man-witch, he found himself back in the living-room at Bobby's.

"Well, that was just plain..." Dean said, as a familiar looking stranger who was about Sam's age, maybe a year younger looked at him oddly, stricken at first, and then sadly.

"I guess it's time then." the woman said as she nodded down at the odd amulet that was at Dean's feet.

"Time for what?" Dean asked.

"For me to say good-bye." the woman said as she went into the kitchen and grabbed ingredients for a summoning ritual.

Less than ten minutes later, the demon Crowley who had had the Colt that had turned out to be completely useless against Satan was standing in the living-room.

"I'm going to need your help with something, and before you ask, it's already been bought and paid for by Crowley." the girl said the instant that Crowley opened his mouth to speak when he realized that he was somewhere other than his house sipping on a glass of his favorite scotch.

"You're asking the impossible." Crowley said from his spot beneath Bobby's Devil's Trap. "When the angels went in to get Dean here, they locked Pandemonium down so tight that not even Lucifer could get in. Nobody's getting in or out of there, ever."

"When have you ever known your friend and mentor to not have a back way out?" the woman asked as she revealed a rather interesting tattoo of a winged serpent with sunglasses that was wrapped around an apple on her left hip, and cut into the apple, causing a bite to be taken out of it, and a vial to appear in her hand.

A rather nervous looking Crowley vanished. An hour later, he reappeared with the dark haired stranger from the video who looked rather worse for wear. The dark haired stranger who incidentally had yellow eyes.

"It's time then?" the demon asked as he snapped his fingers and went from rags to a look that the Crowley who'd had the Colt could only wish to pull off.

"So, Lucy, been saying your prayers and going to church every Sunday like a good little girl?" the demon who gave off similar vibes to Azazel asked as he stalked towards the woman.

"Yes." the woman who had been the girl in the tape replied.

"Good." the yellow-eyed demon said an instant before he stabbed her in the heart.

When Lucy Winchester woke up to find herself on a visit with her little brother whom she hadn't seen since she was eight, she realized that phase one of the plan was complete, and it was up to her to pull off the far trickier phase two, which was to break into Crowley's old garrison and use the celestial lock picks he had given her just in case. The tattoo the demon had given her the day she had made that deal had been drawn on more than just her skin.

The "Just in case" seemed to be necessary as Team Free Will was short one angel.

As she was trying to figure out how to get out of her personal heaven and into where the angels hung out Ash turned up.

"Weird." Ash said as he looked at her. "You used to be over in the kiddie section up until a few hours ago. I think I ran through one of your birthdays trying to get somewhere else. What's really weird though is that I could swear that I met you, the adult you, shortly before I died."

"Ask and you shall receive." Lucy muttered before she went and asked Ash for help.

It seemed that luck was on their side. Aziraphale had been locked up rather than killed, probably having been held in the hope that he would be of use if Crowley, the True Demon, not his little copycat Fergus, decided to interfere with the Apocalypse and somehow managed to do so despite the efforts that had been taken to prevent such from happening. Crowley was a wily little bastard who had slithered away from any number of teams that had been sent out to kill him, and Aziraphale was pretty much Heaven's only hope of finding him. Aziraphale's loyalties were called into question however, hence the locking up.

Fortunately, Crowley had anticipated this probability, and had given her the metaphorical key. As she carefully picked the locks, hoping Ash's little hack job would keep her under the radar, she reflected that now, when she was so close to fulfilling her end of the bargain would be a very bad time to be caught. She didn't know what Crowley the elder would do if he was stuck waiting forever for his friend.

"Thanks dear." Aziraphale said as he was released from the much too small cage.

"Oh, and before Crowley goes and revives me, the answer is yes." she said.

Two minutes later, as she found herself back in the world of the living, she discovered that it was indeed like being chained to a comet as Jimmy Novak had said. It would all be worth it though. Her family was protected. For as long as she kept to her end of the bargain, no demon, True or Low could touch her birth family which had been of a long line of vessels.

As Sam and Dean stood in Bobby's living room prepared to kill either Crowley or both, the woman whom Dean had known for about an hour and Sam had known since they were children opened her eyes. When she did so, it was obvious that somebody else was home.

"Hello dear." the angel Aziraphale said as he smiled at the taller of the two Crowleys.

Somehow, despite being in the body of a woman who had been raised by a Marine, a woman who was dressed in a pair of low-cut jeans and a nearly skin-tight tank top that was more lace than shirt, Aziraphale still managed to look gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.


End file.
